The Weights of Over 16,000 NFL Players

There have been a large number of news reports about concussions in the NFL, and how it’s “today’s monster players” laying down big hits on one another that lead to this danger. I decided to go into the numbers and take a look at this form myself. Here’s a graph showing the median weight of NFL players over time. This data was comes from about 16,000 players collected from pro-football-reference.com

There are a bunch on interesting features in this graph:

The most striking thing is just the overall increase in weight since the mid-80s. This is some combination of nutrition, weightlifting and steroids, although in what combination I don’t know

The wide receivers in particular are very interesting. Why did they go through a shrinking phase and then a growing phase? What was happening in the game that caused this?

Running backs are getting shorter, but also heavier, showing that the game is evolving towards these guys being short, strong and powerful

The weight of kickers drops until the 1980s then rebounds. This is probably because (from Wikipedia) The kicker initially was not a specialized role. Until the 1960s, the kicker almost always doubled at another position on the roster. Therefore the drop through the 1980s is the emergence of the specialized kicker, and the rise thereafter matches that seen in virtually every other position

It’s amazing how small the variation is amongst some of the positions. Plus or minus 6 pounds at 230+ pounds. Represents an incredibly specialized role.

Of course, this is only a small fraction of the story and the following gallery contains both the heights and BMIs of these same players, along with the weights broken down by position to show the scatter. Enjoy!

For those interested in outliers, here are the heaviest quarterbacks to play in the NFL on a year-to-year basis:

1940 season : Bernie Masterson is 195 lbs

1941 season : Tommy Thompson is 192 lbs

1942 season : Russ Cotton is 196 lbs

1943 season : Tommy Thompson is 192 lbs

1944 season : Larry Weldon is 198 lbs

1945-1948 season : Paul Christman is 210 lbs

1949-1952 season : George Blanda is 215 lbs

1953 season : Bob Gambold is 215 lbs

1954-1959 season : George Blanda is 215 lbs

1960-1962 season : Bob Scrabis is 225 lbs

1963 season : Roman Gabriel is 220 lbs

1964 season : Sonny Gibbs is 230 lbs

1965-1966 season : Ron Smith is 220 lbs

1967-1968 season : Roman Gabriel is 220 lbs

1969 season : Bobby Douglass is 225 lbs

1970-1972 season : Frank Patrick is 225 lbs

1973-1976 season : Bobby Douglass is 225 lbs

1977 season : Mike Wells is 225 lbs

1978 season : Bobby Douglass is 225 lbs

1979-1980 season : Bill Troup is 220 lbs

1981-1982 season : Rich Campbell is 224 lbs

1983-1985 season : Todd Blackledge is 225 lbs

1986 season : Jack Trudeau is 227 lbs

1987-1990 season : Vinny Testaverde is 235 lbs

1991-1994 season : Scott Mitchell is 240 lbs

1995-1998 season : Kerry Collins is 248 lbs

1999-2005 season : Daunte Culpepper is 264 lbs

2006 season : Jared Lorenzen is 275 lbs

2007-2009 season : JaMarcus Russell is 265. lbs

2010 season : Kerry Collins is 248 lbs

2011-2013 season : Cam Newton is 260 lbs

And here are the lightest quarterbacks playing in the NFL on a year-to-year basis: